


Burn Marks

by MiraiRah



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Clint Has Issues, Falling In Love, Fraternization, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Other Past Relationships (mentioned), Pining, Secret Relationship, Sexual Themes, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Varying Explicitness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-16 14:43:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7272331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiraiRah/pseuds/MiraiRah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s a globally choreographed dance, the pre-dawn dash. Clint may be less practised at the walk of shame and more at waking up alone, having to go through the process of making sure nothing was stolen – possibilities ranging from kidneys to spare change – but instinct is telling him to flee so that’s what he does.</p>
<p>It’s not the first time in his life Clint finds himself in bed with a colleague of sorts, and it’s also not the first time he’s struggled with his resolve to stay away. These kinds of life choices are exactly why he shouldn’t be a superhero.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Where Clint has some bad habits, and Tony cares <em>none</em> for the semantics of a one-night-stand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Consummate Professional

Stay  
I whispered  
as you  
shut the door behind you  
_— Rupi Kaur, Milk & Honey_

 

 

2:41 AM.

His wristwatch is motion sensitive, which is why he never wears it at night. While he ought to have fallen straight back to sleep after rolling over, that’s not the case, not when the tiny digital screen gleefully lights up his corner of the room. His eyes are open, reluctant but open, taking in the alien shadows, the height of the ceiling, and what looks at first to be an average sized window looking out over the glittering cityscape but is in fact a mirror reflecting a window behind him. It’s taken some time but he's become accustomed to living so high up, so the realisation he’s in a skyscraper isn't even a surprise, but the quality of the sheets and the mattress and even the pillow under his head catches him off guard.

It takes the creepy matryoshka doll staring from the chest-of-drawers turned trinket-stand directly in front of him before the fog rises and he remembers where he is.

That ugly little doll was a gift, in fact he saw it being given. He'd stuffed his mouth full of sandwich just to keep his laughter to himself when he took in the receiver’s glee at being presented with something as mundane as a wooden toy, though perhaps it’d been because of who gave the gift in the first place. Natasha is not a generous woman, so something must’ve been said to her if she’d lugged that garish thing all the way back from a mission in Hungary specifically for Stark.

It’s a globally choreographed dance, the pre-dawn dash. Clint may be less practised at the walk of shame and more at waking up alone, having to go through the process of making sure nothing was stolen – possibilities ranging from kidneys to spare change – but instinct is telling him to flee so that’s what he does. In fact it’s been less than a minute since he woke and he’s already got his jeans back on and barely hanging by his hips, shirt and belt and socks draped over his shoulder, bare feet half buried in his sneakers, and fuck looking for his jacket in the dark. It was fifty bucks at Target and it can stay wherever it landed, provided he was even in the bedroom when he took it off.

He saves his disgraced mutterings for the safety of the elevator, berating himself and insulting Stark but mostly just releasing a litany of curse words to better illustrate how he maybe definitely fucked up, as JARVIS is his witness.

He wastes no time in stripping everything off again and shoving it all down the laundry chute, more than ready to climb into the shower to scrub at the varnish of sweat and unmentionables he swears is coating his entire body. Even his hair feels oily and unclean against his fingers, which he can’t really explain, but it also gives him a sense of kinship with women everywhere who’re also arriving home this early morning with lipstick smears and mascara runs on their face and stilettos in their hands rather than on their feet. _Dirty Whore_ doesn’t look great on anyone come three AM, or so his mirror tells him while he stares himself down through his reflection, but it has more to do with the expression on his face than anything because Stark’s bathroom lighting can make anyone look photogenic regardless of how gross they feel on the inside.

If he could flinch away from his own look of judgement, he would've. He wants to scrape it all away, and yet, standing under the vicious spray, he also kind of… _doesn’t?_

He remembers straddling Tony’s waist, traces his soapy hands over the scratches that actually broke the skin along his hips, presses down in reconstruction of the memory, seeing again in his mind the look on the other man’s face and thinking ‘that’s right’. He catches himself rubbing wistfully at the messy red scrawls on his skin and snarls in contempt, jerking the shower handles until the heat becomes scalding, unpleasant yet deserved. An irritated flush comes over him, but there's a necessity to get clean again, as though the grime was on the outside rather than within, so he suffers through.

“Why the fuck do I always do this to myself?” He asks of his foggy reflection when he’s done boiling away as much off his shame as he can bear. The man that looks back at him is the same man as before, wetter and just a fraction more miserable, and as always, offers him no answers. “Just once, Clint,” he scolds himself, “can you _not_ sleep with someone you have to work with the next day? Is that really so hard?”

As always, there's a tiny part of him, a damaged part that delights in doing this to himself. Yeah, that masochistic little fragment is pretty damn elated right now.

The sex was phenomenal, though. There’s no denying that.

 

* * *

 

Clint only manages to avoid the problem for the next eleven hours, and those hours are not well spent. Sleep was lost on him, he came to find, after too much time spent staring at the back of his closed eyelids and seeing all of the awful ways this scenario could end, or worse, indulging his hopeful side and fantasising of something racy coming to pass, where a spree of sexual encounters might replace the more likely dysfunction that risked disbanding the team. When he isn’t too preoccupied with kicking himself, he's too restless to watch a movie or read, and too sensitive to go looking for company.

After ensuring JARVIS would keep the firing range clear for a good hour or so, Clint takes up his training bow and a beta rifle, and settles in for some old-fashioned SHIELD-approved R&R. The plan? To spend as long as possible taking his aggression out on all manners of targets before a third-party's intervention out of concern for his state of mind.

He never quite reaches the point where Natasha has to pry the killing things from his hands.

“ _Agent Barton, the Avengers have been called to conference room C for a meeting with Director Fury. Shall I disengage the tracking simulation_?”

“Please.”

Clint mourns as the golden light of the elk hologram fades away from inside the modified rifle scope. It's a new toy, linked up to JARVIS as an independent program, designed to mimic an arcade game but blown way out of proportion in exactly the kind of way you’d expect from Tony goddamn Stark, because only Tony would think revolutionising virtual reality for a training simulator was a normal thing to do. He’d been watching the elk for several minutes now, marvelling at how the hologram glittering in front of his eye would disappear when he looked up at the room. The realistic behaviour of the grazing beast was more soothing to observe than 'killing' it would ever be. For a moment there, he considers asking Tony to reconfigure the sniper holo so that the illusion was something he’d actually want to kill, like the Xenomorph from _Alien_ , but that would mean actually talking to the man, which would then require confronting the thing from last night.

No, thanks.

Any stress-relief he’d achieved from hiding away in the range is null and void the moment he realises that they are about to be in the same room together. Clint is nothing if not a consummate professional, so he _professionally_ stows his shit, packs up his equipment and puts it in his locker to pick up later, and steels himself for the next however long this is going to take. It could be hours before he's free to leave, hours during which he is going to have to grow a pair and act like an adult in front of Natasha, and Fury, both of whom were going to take one look at his guilty-as-hell face and know what he’s done. Again.

While he hopes they don’t say anything, another unsavoury thought occurs: _oh, god, what if Stark says something?_

Which begs the question of what kind of jerk is Stark going to be about it.

 

* * *

 

The problem, of course, is that it’s _always_ Clint’s fault, because nobody knows better than Clint that he does these things to himself. Going on his back for Stark was no exception. By his own account he kind of spread his legs and pulled Tony between them. While behaving like that could almost give a man the impression it didn’t matter  _who_ , just so long as everything was in working order, the problem lies in how inaccurate that really is. There’s just something about being in close proximity to extremely competent and dangerous people who would risk their lives for him that makes him hot under the collar. Tony affects him more than anyone, in part because the man seemed to be just as loyal – to him and the rest of the team – outside of the suit as he was when he was in it. Under all of that reputation maintenance, all that carefully-crafted distance they politely endured, it is obvious in an obscure Starkian way that Tony cares about each and every one of them, some more than others but such is life.

Galvanised by alcohol, and by the look Tony probably didn’t intend to give him when he bragged about the truths behind rumours of his prowess, Clint started to flirt. It began not with a conscious decision but with his keen-eyed libido, growing obnoxious as his awareness of the situation rose along with his insobriety. It became obvious, _very_  obvious, he had every intention of taking Tony to bed with him. Tony, who’d played the game himself since his wild teen years struggling under daddy’s corporate thumb, knew exactly what Clint was doing, what he was interested in, how he was encouraging the night to go. He also did absolutely nothing – nada – zilch – to stop it going down that dark road.

Clint vividly remembers Tony telling him about how he was the proof that experience makes the best lovers, and Clint asked with his voice dropping all low and sly-like, “Ever been with a man?” He defends the fact that Tony’s denial surprised him. He could’ve sworn someone as determined to bend the rules would’ve at least tried to fuck with daddy’s right-wing sensibilities, or maybe been too drunk or high to care or really know any different.

When Tony turned the question back around on him, he seemed equally surprised at Clint’s easy answer of, “Oh yeah, plenty,” but that wasn’t so strange – Clint knows he doesn’t really come off as queer to any man he isn’t actively trying to hit on, and his ‘passing for straight’ thing has backfired in bars and pubs everywhere. Nobody really expects the macho dude sucking back vodka straights like they’re tap water, the guy who’s got an expression like he’s ready to fight someone, to _not_ be the guy you should look to for sympathy when another man tries to buy you a drink. He tells Tony of one particularly memorable occasion at a bar in Atlanta when an asshole suit, who was hanging out near him with his phone in his hand one night some several years ago, was approached by another man. When he turned to Clint, who at the time looked every part of the criminal thug he was portraying for cover, and tried to provoke Clint to attack the ‘sick faggot’ on his behalf, Clint had slammed down his glass with the purpose of gathering as much attention as possible. “You could just not be an asshole and tell him thanks but no thanks, like a normal person who ain’t interested,” he recited by heart, before telling in as much detail as Tony demanded the reactions of the other patrons when he’d later kissed the guy who’d been rejected. He also dished everything he could remember from going home with him, to Tony’s unexpected delight.

Tony was a curious one for a guy who was supposedly straight – not that he ever claimed that title – and there was no shortage of questions, or requests of details about his hook-ups with men and women alike. At the time, Clint cared not at all whether it was excitement or entertainment that kept Tony hooked on his sex life, and kept on reinforcing Tony’s earlier statement that practice really does make perfect.

When the bar fridge was suddenly bare of Clint’s favourite beer, Tony seamlessly directed them both up to the penthouse to continue their conversation and indulge in some of his ridiculous and expensive booze together. Even half a day later and practically sober, Clint can’t tell if the invite was intended to be casual or a proverbial green light for the rest of his actions to follow.

Hours slipped away, yet looking back they felt like only minutes, losing time the way drunk-ish people do when wrapped up in conversations. Theirs kept coming back to the same thing: flirtation. Clint, who has always been inspired by enthusiasm, fell into the pattern of innuendo, touch, and blatant suggestion; Tony, who thrived on attention, soaked it all up with a radiant grin.

It was the most ridiculous drunken stunt imaginable that pushed their idle play into an ultimatum – will we, or won’t we – something which Clint plans to keep to himself until the ends of time. Tony wanted to make him a smoothie of all things, seeing as Clint had tried one down in his lab, ingested engine grease, and now had no faith in Tony not to poison him. He didn’t believe the bullshit excuse that DUM-E made it, and because Tony is both stubborn and apparently a master chef when it came to blending fruit, he had a banana handed to him and was ordered to peel and slice – “I’m betting assassins have better hand-eye coordination than engineers when you’re drunk. I’m not allowed to be alone in the kitchen _for reasons_  if my BAC is over point-twelve.” Tony then took one hell of a long look at the fruit in Clint’s hand and asked, “Do you really not have a gag reflex?”

Clint doesn’t even pretend he can’t see the connections between holding a banana and choking on a dick. By that point, there was a chance Tony wanted him to do exactly what he did. Soaked minds don’t need much more of an excuse for encouraging the body to do stupid things.

What he did was look Tony straight in the eyes while proving just how far he could shove something down his throat. Discreetly wiping his mouth afterwards, trying not to be too smug about the intense look on Tony’s face, he set about chopping the banana – yes, he was still going to use it even after it’d already been in his mouth, it was going in _his_ smoothie anyway – and asked, a little arrogantly, “Satisfied? That’s what you wanted to see, right?”

“Did I want to be unfairly turned on by a piece of fruit? No. Am I kind of thinking about the practical use of that skill of yours? Maybe.”

And that, so to speak, was the end of _hours_ of that. Wholly uninterested in smoothies, pretentious alcohols, or anything that wasn’t seeing Tony naked as soon as possible, he didn’t even try playing hard-to-get. He just dove right in, kissing deeply and pulling at an extra layer of clothes that absolutely did not need to be there, thrilled that Tony was ready for him and didn’t hesitate to kiss him back. For a man who’d never touched another man, it seemed Clint’s detailed summary of his experiences stimulated enough instincts to fool anyone who didn’t know better. Only Clint could’ve caught all the pauses and hesitations where Tony was willing but still unsure.

Somehow even then, while a little timid and clumsier than was usual for either of them, the sex was incredible. Waking up in Tony’s bedroom a few hours later with a sinking sense of wrongness...not so much.

If either one of them was going to have to leave the Avengers because of internal conflict, Iron Man would hardly be the first one between them to be removed. For all his frustration towards Tony for encouraging him, he has no one to blame but himself. He just hopes Tony will be willing to look past last night and not let it disrupt the team, even if it comes between their friendship. Clint can count on two fingers the amount of people who’ve managed that much over the years – no, that’s not the majority number.

Approaching the closed doors to conference room C is an exercise in courage, especially when he glimpses the back of Tony’s head through the tinted glass and feels his lungs drop like stones. Faltering is never an option, so he pushes through the doors – a little too forceful, but he pretends not to notice that even if everyone else clearly does – and files in to take his place in one of the two empty seats…on the opposite side of where Stark was sitting. Of course.

He makes sure to meet everyone’s eye as he sits down, hoping to reassure them there aren't any problems with his mood. Meeting Tony’s gaze is easy enough. It's looking away that is fucking impossible, taking note of that pleased little smirk on the other man’s face, the blatant body-scan he gives only once he's sure he has Clint’s attention arrested, the challenging lift of his chin daring him to say something...

And there it is.

Tony, slouched almost directly across from him, with a complacent look on his smug patrician face, _is wearing Clint’s jacket_.

That cheap – relatively speaking – knock-off leather jacket he’d bought at Target almost a year ago, one he’s worn around every single one of his teammates _on multiple occasions_ – because not everyone can afford a year’s worth of different outfits – the one he’d left on the floor of Tony Stark’s penthouse because he was in flight mode, the one he’d figured would wind up in his laundry without him ever having to mention it. That one. And Tony is wearing it. During a conference with the whole team.

He's essentially wearing Clint _Eau de Affaire_.

The undertone of Fury’s voice when he addresses Clint’s late arrival – an exaggeration made for the purpose of subtly calling Clint out – tells him that this little interaction wasn’t overlooked. Which, shit, that means they’re going to have words.

He wonders if Fury is going to bash him over the head with the rule book when they next meet in person. It might actually help, or not, who knows.

 _Or,_ the deviant fragment buried in his hind-brain whispers, _I can just deny it._

Yep. Deny everything, that’s exactly what he’s going to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been feeling so much IronHawk lately, which was a ship that came way out of left field for me but I can deal. This is me, dealing.


	2. Not A Superhero

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It gets a little political for a moment, but it's not that kind of story. I'm trying to subvert the whole 'Civil War' thing and it won't really be mentioned after this.

We, unaccustomed to courage,  
exiles from delight,  
live coiled in shells of loneliness...  
_-Maya Angelou_

 

 

After the Battle of New York, wherein they’d all come together as a conglomerate of super and hero and pulled a miracle out of their asses – no, saving a city from an army of powerful and technologically-advanced aliens should not have taken a fistful of extraordinary people with no help from the US army; that was a damned miracle of biblical proportion – after all of that invasion nonsense, they’d gone and eaten shawarma. It wasn’t really something any of them discussed. They just did it because it was one of the first things Stark babbled about after almost dying, and considering he’d done most of the work and taken the biggest risk as far as Clint was concerned, it wasn’t any skin off of their backs to do that much.

It was entirely on purpose that he sat right across from Stark at the battered husk of a restaurant. He’d never met the guy in person, but like any true gunman he’d never denied that STARK weaponry was the superior brand, and he, like the rest of the trigger-happies of the world, had been disappointed when he got the news that Stark Industries was shutting that particular division down cold turkey. A short while later, a news report dissecting the conference was playing on mute in a café he’d passed through, tailing his mark at the time, and all it took was a cursory look at the footage of Tony Stark struggling to hide all of his injuries behind makeup, a sling, and a fancy suit. Just a few brief soundless seconds and Clint knew, with certainty, that there had been torture, or at least a heavy beating, during what the tickertape was describing as three months of captivity in Afghanistan. Whatever it was, it was apparently extreme enough to turn the Merchant of Death into a pacifist, and he’d decided then to feel sympathy instead of sharing the country's sense of betrayal. There was only so much you could expect from a civilian, after all.

Except, that pacifist part? Yeah, it turns out, not so much.

For a civilian, and a pampered one at that, Tony Stark was one hell of a spitfire, deciding to forge himself into a sword and keep on fighting battles nobody expected him to fight. Like flying a nuclear warhead into a portal.  _That_  was a thing he didn’t have to do, but he did it anyway, and almost paid the price of, oh,  _his life_. Clint saw the suit fall from the sky, caught himself chanting, disregarding the coms, “C’mon,  _come on_ , damn it Stark!”

Iron Man was the first real self-made superhero. Clint would be lying if he said the part of him that remembers looking over the older boys’ shoulders, back when he was a circus brat, reading comics about Captain America and all those other fictional men who were more than men, wasn’t a little bit in awe of Iron Man. He was fascinated on a more sophisticated level by the technology that must’ve gone into building the suit, but also on the baser human level of being delighted by things like illusions and action and greatness. He could accept, within the privacy of his own mind, that he admired Tony Stark since the first glimpse of Iron Man on TV and he realised that  _that_  was the reason why he’d made it out of Afghanistan alive.  _That_  was the reason why Stark Industries technology was the best. He wonders sometimes, if after looking into his mind and seeing these undisclosed thoughts, whether he was the reason Loki learned of and targeted Tony in the first place.

He remembers being able to breathe again at the distant noise of Tony’s voice through Steve’s mic, alarmed at his own survival but very much alive.

So he’d sat across from Tony at the shawarma place, kept a cautious eye out for any hints of typical civilian reaction to trauma, and found himself being awkwardly introduced around the third time Tony caught him staring and decided to stare back in self-defence. Natasha elbowed him in the shin, seeing as his foot was propped up on her chair, and told Tony in succinct tones, “Stark, this is Agent Barton. Hawkeye.”

“Huh,” Tony had said in reply, looking into him and ignoring everyone else except Natasha, who he glanced at only briefly when she spoke. What was surreal was that he looked and sounded like a man who already knew who Clint Barton was. “Is that your superhero name?”

“I’m not a superhero,” Clint scoffed. “I’m just a guy with a bow.”

Tony, living up to his arrogant nature, rolled his eyes and returned to his food, not even bothering to look back up at him again. “Don’t be boring,  _Agent_  Barton.”

From the corner of his eye, he saw Natasha roll hers and keep on eating as well. “He likes you,” she reassured him as they were leaving, when she caught him staring at Stark again, “He’s just used to people not liking him back. He thought you were criticising him for being Iron Man.”

Which made no sense. Clint was the one who felt inadequate sitting at that table, and figured he was just saying what everyone else was thinking. Wouldn’t that be a hell of a thing to criticise Stark about, being Iron Man, not even two hours after playing such a pivotal part in their victory. Just how insecure was this guy?

At the time he didn’t do it to manipulate Tony into liking him, and he definitely hadn’t formed any long-term plans of sleeping with him yet. He was curious about how it was possible for Stark’s self-worth to fluctuate so wildly, and whether or not there was anything genuinely likeable about the guy that could redeem that public image of his. He is damn good agent, he knows exactly how to schmooze with socialites, just like he knows the best ways to butter someone up to get information out of them, but his goal wasn’t to gain.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” Tony had said as they moved out of the way of the shopkeepers, who were busy trying to clean up the evidence of the battle spilling into their restaurant, “I’m going to get drunk so I can pretend you’re all interesting.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Clint piped in before anyone else found the energy to object. Tony’s eyes alighted on him at the sound of his voice.

“What’s your poison?”

“Whisky, if you got it.”

Tony had given him a nod of approval when he saw which brand Clint selected from his collection a short while later, after dealing with Loki and Fury and the order to stay put until SHIELD contacted them in a few hours. He also didn’t show any signs of being uncomfortable when Clint lingered around the bar – which lingered conveniently around Tony – rather than re-joining the group on the couches a short distance away. It was delicate craftsmanship, easing Tony into a conversation without making him suspicious, but it was a relief at the time to focus on something other than what a shitty couple of days he’d had, what with the mind-control and everything. He’d been doing a fairly decent job of it, keeping up drink-for-drink and actually enjoying himself a little bit in the intermissions between his more sinister thoughts. Botched introductions aside, Tony seemed real friendly, and not in any hurry to brush any of them back off onto SHIELD.

And then it went back to hell, because why not?

Singularly keeping Tony entertained had so far taken up the better part of half an hour and it was proving to be a fun way to distract himself. There was something rewarding about making Tony laugh... “Why can’t more agents be like you?” Tony had said, still chuckling quietly after Clint tried justifying that one time he glued his hand to a compound bow because the tube of what he _thought_ was oil - to be fair, the 'oil' was given to him, and therefore a prank - was labelled in Swahili. “Romanov hates me for no real reason, and Coulson, he…”

Clint’s good humour receded. “Coulson  _what?_ ”

Tony was squinting at him then, leaning away a little like he wasn’t quite sure what kind of proverbial chemicals he’d stirred together. “You don’t know,” he’d said, soft and dark, quiet observation. He didn’t really have to say anything else. Clint could see it, read it clear as day from Tony’s wary expression.

The glass in his hand slipped when he tried to place it back on the bar top, fell on the floor and miraculously didn't shatter when it fucking should've. Tony barely managed to catch him when his knees gave out, saving him from landing against the solid marble edge when he swayed. Clint remembers his ears blocking with the whistling sound of waves and wind, mind full of electric blue, thinking a little selfishly,  _Am I interesting yet?_

He came back to himself less than ten minutes later, laid out on the couch, with Tony sitting on the floor beside him and rolling an empty glass between his palms while the others’ voices filled the room. Tony must’ve felt Clint’s eyes on him after a while because he turned and met them straight on, then craned his neck back until his head settled on Clint’s hip, eyes sliding closed, glass set aside.  _This is mourning_ , he’d thought, and quickly ran his hand through Tony’s hair, just once, indulgent. He leaves his hands to himself as he drifts back into something other than wakefulness. With Natasha nearby he’d be safe to sleep until the Director needs them. He forgot, in that moment, that Tony was still technically a stranger to him, despite feeling as though they'd known each other a long time ago.

Something familiar, like an echo. A  _maybe._

 

* * *

 

 

Clint hardly pays a lick of attention to the conversation, and not because he’s five feet away from his one-night stand.

Their most recent deployment was into Argentina initially, but when the aftershocks spilled over the border into Chile, not only hazard and debris but a pair of Chilean teenagers stuck in a foreign hospital, some extensive private property damage, and an attempted insurance fraud that was now somehow  _their_  problem. Suffice to say some red tape was crossed. While Argentinian authorities had agreed to allowing the Avengers into their country, Chile's had not, and the discussion now was what they were going to do about it, and future issues like it. SHIELD was an international consortium, being that governments globally recognised, employed, and were employed, but the Avengers are an American militia, led by  _Captain_  America. That alone generated plenty of issues, beginning and not ending with how hard it is to prove the Steve Rogers that emerged in New York was the very same Steve Rogers from World War II.

And then there's the existential crisis nobody wants to talk about. A partial member of the team is an old pagan  _God_ , but for the peace of mind of multiple religious’ organisations, and to control the insurgence of Norse fanatics that might act in Loki’s name, he was officially labelled an extra-terrestrial. Not that it particularly helped matters, that, because now people were just getting more enthusiastic about UFO sightings and other X-Files type things. Thor’s existence, as an alien or a god, still kicked Creationism to the back of the class, and instead of Norse radicals they were having to deal with Christian extremism and debates whether Thor was a reincarnation of Jesus, the son of Satan, or just a fucking liar. The radio silence from the Scientology faction felt kind of ominous, in Clint's unwanted opinion, and was not to be taken for granted.

People took exception to everyone on the team, even himself and Black Widow. Their identities were not public knowledge, despite multiple leaked photographs and videos of them fighting without masks. Even if JARVIS and SHIELD continued to work together to wipe their faces off the net, it looked as though super suits were going to be up for debate pretty soon, which Clint was secretly impatient about getting on with. In the meantime, the public enjoyed speculating what made them so special they were working with the Avengers, and what they had to hide if they wouldn’t reveal themselves like Steve or Tony. He’s seen online debates on whether or not they’re mutants, androids, and the most ridiculous theory yet - that they’re mythical creatures. Tony had called him Artemis for almost a week before he got bored or forgot altogether.

Tony was actually restricted from Afghanistan and several other small Middle Eastern countries, which seemed ridiculous considering he was a victim of all the conflict already over there, but it came out eventually that the ban was because the first thing Iron Man did after conception was stir shit up overseas. Not to mention the US was still using STARK explosives during drone strikes, because anything already owned by the military couldn’t legally be repealed, fostering the image that Stark was a liar who didn’t really stop producing weapons, or that he just had a vendetta against Afghanistan in particular. “I don’t,” Tony had explained, rushing to cover up the dubious pride of having an entire country fear him, “I bet it’s lovely there. I’m sure there’s more to it than caves and sand and terror. I just don’t ever want to go there again. Seriously, I don't want me there either.” There were other places of course – STARK Industries was still boycotted in New Zealand and several Scandinavian countries as recently as the New York attack, though tireless negotiations on the back of Iron Man’s heroism broke through the hostility at last. Bruce mentioned there was some verbal bribery on the clean energy front, but Clint wagers they’re more like promises if they came from Tony himself, especially after success of the Tower. Positive relations with peaceful countries or not, the fact was that Iron Man couldn't legally act as part of their team in certain _other_ countries, and if they were called to a fight in Afghanistan where everything went to shit and they needed backup, there wasn't a single thing Tony could do to help without risking a war. 

The biggest thing they were learning was that other countries just didn’t want Americans coming over and making a mess. Good messes are still messes, still require cleaning up afterwards. “It’s a different world now,” the Director explained when Steve couldn’t grasp why their saving lives wasn’t appreciated. “The world isn’t at war anymore, and no country I know of wants another one interfering with their system. There are hundreds of countries, hundreds of sides. A world war in the twenty-first century would wipe us off the face of the planet, so the maintenance of peace is the only solution we have to stay alive.”

Tony interjected - while playing with the zipper on  _Clint’s_  jacket, god damn him - “We're here to put a lid on terrorism, interstellar or otherwise.  _That_  is what we do. It’s on us not to become the terrorists while we’re doing our jobs.” It came out sounding more personal than the situation counted for, but credit to him, because Steve started to understand more as the discussion moved on to a comparison between homeless war veterans and how some of the people they save lose everything but their lives in the fallout. It was surreal how quiet and captivated everyone became when Tony made his case. “Living is not enough,” he surmised, “that’s not all people deserve. That’s a basic human right, sure, but so is having a home, and food, and a job, and there are people - good people - with none of those things.” Months ago someone, Steve probably, might’ve made a comment about how Tony’s not exactly scraping by, why couldn’t he just chuck money at people if he’s so concerned, but that would be deflecting from the point. They've grown as a team, enough to understand that money was not the same thing as compassion, and to be thankful that Tony has both.

Clint opens his mouth to agree without even thinking. “Kind of hard to tell someone ‘just be glad you’re still alive’ when they just lost their family, their house, photos, everything they own,” he says, because he made that mistake once a long time ago. He’d never known that kind of devastation – different kinds, sure, and a whole lot of it, but never anything like that. He’d never a whole lot to lose in the first place, at least never anything he hadn’t clutched in a feeble grip, ready to drop at the first sign of being burned. At least when things were taken from him, he was already expecting it. “Even harder to tell them that if they don’t speak English and they don’t understand why we’re there in the first place. There's always got to be a scapegoat. People need something to blame to overcome things like that: god, the enemy,  _us_. Doesn't matter which.”

Talk came back around to the Chilean border and why it was only a slight oversight, but a clear example of how they need to start handling international affairs, and Clint checks out again. Steve and Tony are the politicos of the Avengers, for more reasons than just the obvious. An alien god and a fugitive of the US government, both of whom have devastating tempers, weren't prime candidates for making nice with over the pounding of a gavel. While Tony's long history of supporting the troops went over nicely with the Conservatives, and his charities and resourcing of clean energy was ticking a bunch of Liberal boxes, Steve just had to have milk and patriotism for breakfast every morning and he was the darling of the states once more.

When he tunes out it’s to the harmony of Tony and Steve’s voices, debating and suggesting in equal turn, while Nick urged them on with no clear end in sight. It’s a marvel that they hadn’t started fighting, better yet that they probably won’t. Months ago chairs would’ve been thrown… maybe not quite as extreme as that, provided Tony wasn’t feeling theatrical and nobody offended Bruce, but they can’t say there has _never been_ a chair-throwing incident, because that would be a bold-faced lie. There’s also been a table-breaking one. And a few minor altercations with ceramics and glassware. Much less of that now that they were getting the hint Tony Stark actually _did_ care if you broke his things, even with all those billions.

He tunes back in to the ripples of movement around him, members of the team pulling out chairs and disbanding, a susurrous of conversation by the door as Bruce waved Natasha out before him. Tony goes the opposite direction, up toward the screen with Nick Fury’s face still projected in front of them, both men unimpressed but intent. Tony murmurs something Clint barely catches in his distraction, still reeling with how suddenly the meeting was over, something about “I’ve got the latest revisions for you to sign off on, so my people will contact your people.”

“Then it better be on my desk by tomorrow morning, Stark.”

He sees from just the corner of it that Tony’s grin is sharp and empty. “Eager to get rid of me, Nicky?”

“The quicker this splinter of yours gets removed from my ass, the better I’ll feel.”

“You and me both. Pleasure doing business with you, then,” Tony literally bows out, rounding the end of the table to Clint’s side, who starts paying attention just quick enough to take note of the treacherous vibe he gets from Tony’s grin before the other man moves behind him. A quick hand runs through Clint’s hair – a selfish touch – and skims his shoulder in passing. “ _Barton_.”

Oh, that _wretch_.

He probably shouldn’t sit here saying nothing, doing nothing – if you count staring after Tony Stark with a case of slack-jaw as being nothing – while Director Fury is still on the line. His skin is still prickling from the contact even after Tony left with a conspiring wink at the two of them through the narrowing gap of the conference room doors. He’s still staring even when he can’t follow the man through the glass walls any longer.

A throat clears. Clint feels his heart kick the backs of his ribs.

“Sir,” he acknowledges, wrestling the urge to keep his head down because he isn’t weak or guilty – even though he is, sometimes that’s _all_ he is – because Nicholas Fury doesn’t have much respect for cowards.

From the look of him, Nick seems to be chewing his cheek in thought. He’s eased off just enough to hint at familiarity, a tactic he’s used plenty of times on Clint and many other agents to imply trust, a subtle physical encouragement to be open and honest throughout the conversation. It’s Nick’s way of pretending you’re friends and it's okay to talk to him. Clint’s gotten plenty used to lying and telling him what he wants to hear, long before Loki’s incursion on his mind, back when he was sent to psyche eval after psyche eval because nobody knew what to do with him. He’s been a regular customer since his recruitment, going back after the battle of New York was like visiting old friends. They may or may not have rubber-stamped him.

“You feel like explaining to me what that stunt was all about?”

_Here goes…_

“Stark has a history of being fickle with his attentions, Sir. And of trying to rile people up. He bores quickly.”

Nick seems to consider this, his words slow and processing, “You’re telling me the truth, Agent?”

“Stark was only trying to get a reaction.”

The answering sigh is heavy with what he just knows has to be a surplus of zen thoughts. “I’m tired of repeating myself, Clint.”

“I understand, Sir.”

“You’d better not be getting ideas.”

“Of course not, Sir.”

“I mean it,” Nick says, waving a finger at him through the screen for his unwavering attention, and states slowly, like a teacher might repeat something for a child until they’re sure they’ve been understood, “don’t you do it. Don’t let me catch you again. Don’t let Stark get into your head.”

He just nods as a token of his obedience, because if he didn’t, and he'd opened his mouth, he’d probably have burst out into hysterical laughter instead. _Too late_ , he thinks, and discreetly brings a hand up to rub firmly at the back of his shoulder where Tony touched him, half expecting to find the skin radiating heat with the way it still burned even now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, updates might be a little staggered because I’m entered in the WinterIron bang and I have deadlines to work around. I have a lot written for this, but the editing process takes up a lot of time and focus that I’m not sure I have on hand until that project is out of the way. I actually posted the first chapter on a whim, but I’ve committed so I’ll do my best to round off a new chapter every one-to-two weeks at least.


End file.
